Earlier her father, Jean-Le Pen,
the convicted racist and anti-Semite Jean-Marie Le Pen, had laid a
wreath of Joan of Arc in Paris.

Mr Le Pen, who remains the honorary president of the FN and who is
funding his daughter’s election campaign with a loan worth more than
£6m, told supporters to vote in their masses.

He was a frequent presidential candidate, and came second to the conservative Jacques Chirac in 1995.

Mr Macron meanwhile taunted his far-right rivals by visiting the spot where her FN supporters murdered a Moroccan immigrant.

Mr Macron paid a moving tribute at the Carousel Bridge, in central
Paris, where Brahim Bouarram was killed by neo-Nazis attached to the
party exactly 22 years ago today.

At the time Ms Le Pen was an
up-and-coming FN politician, having unsuccessfully stood for a
parliamentary seat in the French capital.

The four men involved in Bouarram’s killing were all in the same FN
cortege as Ms Le Pen and her father as they paid homage to Joan of Arc
on May Day 1995.

Referring to the Bouarram tribute, a member of
Mr Macron’s En Marche! (On the Move!) political movement said: "Emmanuel
Macron was determined to honour Brahim and in turn to show what the FN
is all about."

Bouarram, a married father-of-two, was first of all attacked by the FN
supporters, who chanted racist slogs, before throwing him into the River
Seine, where he was left to drown.

His murder – for which four attackers were eventually convicted –
caused shockwaves in the middle of the 1995 presidential election, which
was contested by Mr Le Pen.

Francois Mitterand, the then
Socialist head of state, stopped campaigning between the two rounds as
12000 people gathered on the bridge to pay tribute to Bouarram.

Ms Le Pen, who came second in this year’s first round, has been desperately trying to distance the FN from its xenophobic image.

Last
week she stood down as leader of the party, saying she wanted to become
France’s first female president as a candidate of the whole country.

But Mr Macron has constantly been reminding people of the FN’s roots,
including Ms Le Pen’s personal links with neo-Nazis and Holocaust
deniers.

Earlier this month, Ms Le Pen caused outrage by claiming
that the French were not responsible for the round-up of Paris Jews
during the Second World War.

She is currently trailing in opinion
polls, which suggest that the independent Mr Macron will win Sunday’s
poll by as much as 60 per cent.

Chaos In Paris During May Day March
Reviewed by newsrepublique media
on
May 01, 2017
Rating: 5